
REVEREND STEPHEN BACHILER 



STEPHEN BACHILER 

AN 
UNFORGIVEN PURITAN 



y' 



^ 



VICTOR C SANBORN 



CONCORD, N. H. 

NEW HAMPSHIRE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

1917 



STEPHEN BACHILER: AN UNFORGIVEN 

PURITAN. 

By Victor C. Sanborn. 

The story which I have to tell concerns the biography of 
one who lived through the 'years of the most wonderful 
century of EngUsh history, that period from 1560 to 1660. 
Those years marked the youth and splendor of British 
achievement in the realm of spiritual awakening, of literary 
and intellectual development, and of commercial activity, 
colonization, and world building. 

In the hundred years I have mentioned Puritanism made 
its first successful stand against the English church, which 
still clung to Romish superstition. They saw, those golden 
years, the imperishable dramas of Shakespeare unfolded to 
the world, the lofty verse of Milton, the graceful muse of 
Jonson, and the brilliant philosophy of Bacon. For them 
the poetical soul, the chivalrous Ufe and death of Sir Philip 
Sidney, were current fact, not history and tradition. 

In that short century lived and died the great freebooters 
of the virgin seas, Raleigh and Drake, Frobisher and Haw- 
kins. Less afraid of new worlds than of old creeds, the 
Pilgrims and the Puritans in that century left their homes 
in the "haunt of ancient peace," and sought fresh soil 
wherein to plant the colony which was to grow into our 
present vast-spreading repubUc. The feeble, pedantic, and 
pleasure loving Stuarts saw in that century the sceptre 
snatched from their hands, when Hampden, Cromwell, and 
Harry Vane turned England from a kingdom into a common- 
wealth. 

In the same period HoU^nd became a Protestant republic 
in spite of the bloody persecutions of PhiUp. France 
turned Huguenot after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
and the grasp of Spain began to weaken in the old world 

and the new. 

3 



But, while time has thrown on the stage a thousand full 
length and heroic figures, some there were of lesser note 
who yet played a part in the life of the age, but whose 
history has been obscured by time, or darkened by con- 
temporary dislike and slander. From the mass of these 
smaller men I have selected as a type one who lived the 
century through not unworthily, as I hope to show. 

Two or three years after Elizabeth came to the throne 
'there was born somewhere in southern England one Stephen 
Bachiler. Just what was his birthplace I do not know, nor 
what his ancestry. The name was a common one, and 
whether his parents were of Hampshire or Berkshire does 
not specially matter. Perhaps, indeed, they came from 
Protestant France or the Netherlands. To Southampton 
about 1568 came a small colony of Walloons, driven from 
their shops and studies by the iron hand of Philip. Among 
them were a father and son named Bachelier from Tournai 
in France.^ The teacher of this little band of Protestants 
was Adrien de Saravia, that stout champion of Calvin. 
Adrien was born in Artois, his father a Spaniard, his mother 
a Fleming, and he was a minister in Antwerp until driven 
to the Channel Islands in 1560. From there he came to 
Southampton for a few peaceful years, returned to Leyden 
in 1582 as professor of divinity, and was again driven back 
to Protestant England, where he ended his days. I like to 
imagine that Stephen Bachiler was a charge of this brave 
Adrien, and drank in from him that opposition to tyranny 
and abuse which marked and marred his life. 

But, whatever his origin, we first find Bachiler at Oxford 
in 1581,2 a student at St. John's College, then newly founded 
by the good citizen and London merchant. Sir Thomas 
White. The college of that time was vastly different from 
the St. John's of to-day, with its peaceful gardens, smooth 
lawns and ancient cedars. The good Sir Thomas, since its 
foundation, had lost much of his money, and his college was 

1 See Records of Walloon Church in Southampton, pub. by Huguenot 
Soc. 

^ Matriculations at Oxford, pub. by Oxford Hist. Soc. 



very poor. Not for some years did it receive new founda- 
tions and added wealth. But, poor or rich, it was a part 
of that seat of learning, the great University of Oxford, 
at that time a very hive of Puritanism. 

The Regius Professor of Divinity was Lawrence Hum- 
phrey, an ardent Lutheran, who was disciplined by Arch- 
bishop Grindal for refusing to wear the churchly vestments. 
John Harmer, the Earl of Leicester's favorite and one of 
Queen Elizabeth's scholars, was Regius Professor of Greek. 
The unfortunate Thomas Kingsmill, another Puritan, was 
head professor in Hebrew. Edward Cradocke was Mar- 
garet Professor of Divinity, and the most renowned scholar 
of the day, an Oxford man, John Rainoldes, was the head 
and front of the Puritan arm of the church, and the spokes- 
man of the Puritan party. Rainoldes is called by quaint 
Anthony Wood "a living library and a third university." 
He declined a bishopric, preferring to remain the President 
of Corpus Christi College, and from his Oxford study sent 
forth a mass of treatises in favor of the advanced doctrines. 
It was he who mainly represented Puritanism at the Hamp- 
ton Court conference of 1604, and it was at his suggestion 
and by his aid that the well-meaning but pedantic King 
James undertook that translation of the Bible which is 
to-day mainly used. 

Indeed, in England generally at this time, 1581-7, the 
leanings of the wisest were toward Puritanism. Elizabeth 
was sometimes Puritan and sometimes Prelatic; but her 
best advisers were of the new religion. Cecil, the great 
Lord Burghley, who for half a century of troubled life was 
Prime Minister to the lively and changeable Queen, held 
firmly to the same persuasion, and so did Walsingham and 
the unfortunate Davison. 

Thus we may safely assume that Bachiler's university 
training was mainly Puritan, and the atmosphere of St. 
John's was not in the least Prelatical until the time of its 
later Fellow and President, the ill-fated Laud. 

Among the scholars at St. John's during Bachiler's sojourn 
there was Henry Cromwell, an uncle of the Protector, who 



was father-in-law of Sir Oliver St. John, Cromwell's Lord 
Chief Justice, and of whose sisters one was the mother of 
the patriot, John Hampden, and another was the mother 
of Edward Whalley, the regicide, later a fugitive in New 
England. 

At Oxford Bachiler continued until February, 1586, when 
he proceeded B.A.^ Perhaps he then became a chaplain 
to Lord Delaware, who presented him in 1587^ to the 
vicarage of Wherwell, Hampshire, a small retired parish on 
the River Test, whose "troutful stream," celebrated by 
Isaak Walton, is still a favorite resort of anglers. 

Here Bachiler preached for twenty years, and here he 
doubtless hoped to end his days. No more peaceful and 
beautiful place is to be found in sunny Hampshire, lying 
as it does in the middle of verdant and fertile meadows. 
Wherwell was the seat of an ancient abbey, founded in 986 
by Queen Aelfrida, the widow of King Edgar. At the 
Dissolution the abbey was granted to Thomas West, Lord 
La Warr or Delaware, and it soon became the principal 
seat of that great family. Here then let us leave Stephen 
Bachiler to marry and raise a family of his own, while we 
consider the events that began to crowd thick upon Eng- 
land. 

In the very year when Bachiler was made vicar of 
Wherwell the preparations for the invasion of England by 
the Invincible Armada were being completed by the "spider 
of the Escurial." Her eyes blinded by the duplicity of 
Alexander Farnese, Elizabeth was still dreaming of an 
alliance with Spain, and was considering seriously the aban- 
donment of that combination with Holland which finally 
kept Protestant powers the sovereigns of the world. Had 
it not been for the wisdom of Walsingham and the pugnacity 
of Drake and Hawkins, England's Protestants and Puritans 
might have been led in chains to the autos-da-fe of Spanish 
invaders, and the clock of the world's progress might have 
been set back another century. 

^ Degrees of Oxford Univ., pub. by Oxford Hist. Soc. 
^ Register of Thomas Cooper, Bishop of WLnton, 10. 



But the alarm had awakened Britain from her slumbers. 
Preparations were made on sea and shore to resist the 
Spanish invasion, and when the 130 ships of the Invincible 
Armada appeared off Dover in 1588 a squadron of as many 
tiny fighting craft was ready. By the seamanship of the 
discredited Drake the unwieldy galleons of Spain were put 
to flight, and the tempests of August 15th finished the work 
of that great freebooter, and forever dispelled the fear that 
Catholic Spain would conquer Protestant England. 

Meanwhile in England the Puritan party was disputing 
the supremacy of the established church. The death of the 
great Puritan prelate Grindal in 1583 summoned to the 
primacy John Whitgift, whose "cold mediocrity," as the 
elder Disraeli called it, was no match for the fiery argu- 
ments of the Martin Mar Prelate controversy. In the 
century and a half which had succeeded the dissolution of 
the monasteries and the establishment of a Protestant 
church in England, the same material abuses which had 
prevailed in the older church showed themselves in the 
reformed episcopacy. The prelates waxed rich, while the 
people were overridden. The clergy was corrupt and the 
rites of the church were abused. Of a sudden a pamphlet 
ridiculing these abuses ran like wildfire over the land. 
Whether the first "Mar Prelate" monograph was written 
by John Penry, by Barrow, or by Job Throckmorton will 
perhaps never be known, and does not now especially 
matter. The attack was so sudden, the knife went so deep 
into the vitals of the establishment, that the surprised and 
angry bishops retaliated in similar rude and scurrilous 
pamphlets, and by fines, imprisonments, and persecutions 
attempted in vain to checkthe growing wrath of the people 
towards the prelates. The first categorical answer to the 
Mar Prelate pamphlets was written by Thomas Cooper, the 
same bishop of Winchester who had a year before ordained 
Bachiler vicar of Wherwell. But the established church 
was forced to attack both Romish priests and Puritan non- 
conformists, which weakened the force of attempts against 
either, and popular sympathy was far greater for the Puritan 



8 

revolt against the establishment. The last years of Eliza- 
beth's reign were marked by persecutions of Recusants and 
Reformers, with numberless imprisonments and executions. 
The Puritan faction grew steadily, and when in 1603 James 
of Scotland came to the throne great was the rejoicing 
among them, for it seemed that a Scotch King of England 
augured well for the victory of Presbyter versus Prelate. 

During all this time our vicar of Wherwell became, we 
may imagine, a man of influence. Perhaps the Lord Dela- 
ware who succeeded in 1595, and who married a daughter 
of the Puritan Sir Francis Knollys, favored him with his 
patronage, listened to his preaching, and agreed with his 
opinions. In 1596 Bachiler was named as an overseer in 
the will of William Spencer of Cheriton, a rich Hampshire 
squire, who had married one of his parishioners. Probably 
our vicar was one of the thousand English clergymen who 
sanctioned the millenary petition to King James, which 
greeted the Scotch monarch on his coming to the English 
throne, — a petition which urged the King to reform the 
crying abuses of the established church, and besought him 
to allow the Puritan pastors to continue their " prophesyings 
and preachings'- undeterred by the persecutions of their 
bishops. 

As a result of this petition King James called the Hamp- 
ton Court conference in 1604. Four divines represented 
the Puritan party, John Rainoldes, John Knewstub, Law- 
rence Chaderton, and Henry Sparke. Against them were 
ranged eight English prelates, headed by the next Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, Richard Bancroft, their bitter 
opponent. Lord Delaware was a member of this conference, 
which resulted badly for the popular party, for on Rain- 
oldes's mentioning the word presbyter King James's wrath 
was aroused, and he dismissed the conference with bitter 
reproaches, telling the Puritans that he would "make them 
conform or harry them out of the land." 

The following year was marked by the ejection of hun- 
dreds of Puritans, who declined to follow the hated cere- 
monies of the church. In May, 1605, Archbishop Bancroft 



9 

held an ecclesiastical court at Winchester, and undoubtedly 
instructed the willing Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, 
to dismiss at once all his non-conforming clergymen. 
Among these was Stephen Bachiler, who was ejected in 
August, 1605,^ from the peaceful riverside parish where he 
had preached acceptably for eighteen years. 

The neighboring dioceses of Winchester and Salisbury 
were at this time under anti-Puritan rule. At Winchester 
was Bilson, an ardent champion of the establishment; at 
Salisbury was Bishop Henry Cotton, of Hampshire descent, 
who persecuted Puritan and Romanist alike, and of whom 
the quaint Sir John Harrington says "he had 19 children by 
one wife, whose name was Patience," — adding "I have 
heard of few wives of that name, and none of that quality.'^ 
When Elizabeth made Henry Cotton Bishop of Salisbury 
and William Cotton Bishop of Exeter (both persecutors of 
the sectaries) she observed that she had "well Cottoned the 
West" and the Salisbury prelate might have said the same 
of the rich preferments which he bestowed on his numerous 
family. 

The next twenty years offer us but scanty notes of 
Bachiler's life. Winthrop says he "suffered much at the 
hands of the Bishops" ^ and family tradition alleges that 
he fled to Holland like the little band of Separatists from 
Scrooby, who in 1620 formed the Pilgrim colony at Plym- 
outh. Bachiler was at 45, in the prime of his powers. We 
may imagine that, fitted by scholarship and by the turn of 
his mind, he was an ardent, able controversialist. We know 
that many of his parishioners followed him ^ from the 
church at Wherwell to his ministrations under Puritan 
auspices at the adjoining hamlet of Newton Stacy. In 1607 
Henry Shipton,^ a wealthy tanner of Shawe, across the 
border in Berkshire, leaves him a small legacy, and in 1616 
Edmund Alleyn ^ of Hatfield Peverell, a rich Essex squire, 

' Register of Thomas Bilson, Bp. of Winton, 18. 

2 Hosmer's Winthrop Journal, vol. II, p. 45. 

' Petition of Sir Robert Paine, Dom. Cal. State Papers, 1635. 

^ Will of Henry Shipton, 1607. Arch. Berks K. fol. 260. 

» Will of Edmund Alleyn, 1615. P. C. C. Cope 87. 



10 

bequeaths him a similar sum. In 1610 Bachiler's son 
Stephen was entered at Magdalen College in Oxford/ the 
family college of the Wests, Lords Delaware. In 1621 the 
diary of Adam Winthrop, father of the Massachusetts 
Governor, says^ that he had "Mr. Bachiler the preacher" 
to dine with him. That he was not without means is shown 
by the Hampshire land records,^ which recite, between 
1622 and 1630, his purchase and sale of small properties in 
Newton Stacy. A petition of Sir Robert Payne,^ Sheriff of 
Hampshire in 1632, states that several of his tenants, 
"having been formerly misled by Stephen Bachiler, a 
Notorious inconformist, demolished a chapel at Newton 
Stacy, and executed many things in contempt of the canons 
and the bishop." 

Thus preaching, persecuted, and adhered to by his former 
parishioners, Bachiler passed a score of years and reached 
the age of seventy. His children had grown up and married f 
one son had become a chaplain in an English regiment in 
Holland, and one a merchant in Southampton.® One 
daughter married John Wing, an English Puritan minister 
at Flushing and The Hague; and another Christopher 
Hussey, perhaps a relative of the mayor of Winchester of 
the same name, who married a daughter of the Hampshire 
Puritan prebendary Renniger; a third daughter married a 
Hampshire Samborne, probably connected with James 
Samborne, the Winchester scholar and Oxford graduate, 
Puritan vicar of Andover and rector of Upper Clatford, 
neighboring villages to Wherwell. 

With the accession of Charles I in 1625 Puritanism re- 
ceived another blow, and many of the English reformers, 
encouraged by the success of the Plymouth Pilgrims of 

1 Records of Magdalen College, June, 1610. 

2 Diary of Adam Winthrop, June 11, 1621. 

3 Feet of Fines, Hampshire-Paschal Term, 1622, Paschal Term, 1629. 
Michaelmas term, 1630. 

* Dom. Cal. State Papers 1635. 

' Sanborn Genealogy, pp. 59-60. 

* Sanborn Genealogy, pp. 59-60. 



11 

1620, decided to seek in the New World a freer atmosphere 
for their religious opinions. By this time Baehiler had 
reached an age when most men become weary of struggling, 
anxious to lay aside contention and strife, and to obtain a 
few years of rest. Not so our Hampshire Puritan, whose 
eager spirit outran his years, and who thought he saw in 
America an Arcadia of religious freedom. 

In 1630 a small band of London merchants,^ perhaps 
friends of Bachiler's son Nathaniel, formed a colonizing 
company, called the "Company of Husbandmen" and 
obtained from Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the great enemy to 
New England Puritanism, a patent to some 1600 square 
miles in his province of New England south of the river 
Sagadahock. This Company of Husbandmen sent to 
America in the fall of 1630 a small ship called the "Plough," 
with a meagre band of colonists to settle on their new patent, 
probably about where the present city of Portland stands. 
The grant from Gorges seems to have conflicted with other 
grants, and the original patent is lost, so that we cannot 
exactly locate the land, which the Husbandmen thought 
embraced the seacoast from Cape Porpoise to Cape Eliza- 
beth. 

This first little ship-load, sent from England six months 
after Winthrop's well found colony, appears to have landed 
on their grant in the hard winter of 1630-1, and were much 
disappointed in the outlook. The upper coast of New Eng- 
land was sterile and forbidding, bare of settlements except 
for a few scattering fishing stages, and we may imagine the 
Husbandmen were poorly equipped with the necessaries for 
colonization. Whether Baehiler was an original member of 
the company I cannot state, for none of their records have 
survived that general loss of manuscripts which has occurred 
in the lapse of four hundred years. Presumably he was, 
since the first letter-^ from the London managers, dated in 
March, 1631-2, and sent to their New England colonists, 
speaks as though he had for some time been eager in the 

' Genealogist, vol. XIX, New Series, pp. 272-3. 

2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4 Series, vol. VII, pp. 91-4, notes. 



12 

Pompany's work. In this letter the London members ask 
the colonists to remember their duty to return thanks to 
God who "hath filled the heart of our reverend pastor so 
full of zeal, of love and of extraordinary affection toward our 
poor society. Notwithstanding opposition yet he remaineth 
constant, persuading and exhorting, — yea and as much as 
in him lieth — constraining all that love him to join together 
with us. And seeing the Company is not able to bear his 
charge over, he hath strained himself to provide provision 
for himself and his family, and hath done his utmost 
endeavor to help over as many as he possibly can, for your 
further strength and encouragement." 

For another year, then, or until the spring of 1632, the 
Plough Company worked in England to secure more colo- 
nists and to enlarge their resources. The London members 
were none of them rich, but all were bound together by 
some mystical religious fellowship, the exact significance of 
which has been lost in the ensuing centuries of oblivion. 
England was, indeed, from 1620 to 1630 a fruitful mother 
of diverse and complicated sects. The stern rule of Arch- 
bishop Bancroft had been followed by the gentler but less 
forcible Abbot, who was born in the same year as Bachiler, 
and of whom Lord Clarendon says, — "He considered Chris- 
tian religion no otherwise than as it abhorred and reviled 
Popery; and valued those men most who did it most furi- 
pusly." In the last years of Abbot's primacy he had lost 
credit with the Court, and had been supplanted by that 
Bishop of London who was to succeed him, William Laud, 
the bitter foe of the Puritans. Laud's narrow but deter- 
mined spirit had quite changed the religious complexion of 
Oxford; and his promotion to the bishopric of London and 
to the King's Privy .Council inaugurated an era of suppres- 
sion and severity which aroused and united the hostility of 
these various sects against the established church. 

But two letters remain,^ so far as the manuscript records 
pf the 17th century have been printed, to show who were 
the active members of that ill-fated and meagre Company 

1 Mass. Hist. Soc, Coll., 4 Series, vol. VII, pp. 91-6, note. 



13 

of Husbandmen. John Dye, Grace Hardwin, and Thomas 
Jupe, three London merchants of Hmited education and 
narrow resources, were the principal factors. On the first 
ship came over John Crispe, Bryan Binckes, and John 
Carman, who seem to have had some authority in the 
company, but concerning whom the records disclose nothing 
of note. The loosely knit little company seems to have been 
organized and kept alive by the strenuous efforts of Bachiler 
and his kinsmen. A second shipment of goods and colonists 
was sent out in March, 1632, on- two ships, the "William 
and Francis" and the "Whale." The colonists on the for- 
mer ship were captained by the stout old Hampshire parson, 
now over 70, and the party on the "Whale" by his relative, 
Richard Dummer, also a Hampshire man, who had not 
joined the religious circle of the Husbandmen, but who waS 
doubtless induced by Bachiler to finance the enterprise to 
some extent. Dummer was a man of breadth and ability, 
whose connection must have been of value to the struggling 
company, though he soon foresaw its failure and identified 
himself with Winthrop's more permanent enterprise. 

While Bachiler, Dummer, and the London members of 
the Company were thus helping on the enterprise in Eng- 
land, imagining that the colony of the Sagadahock Riverwas 
firmly planted in the new soil, that poor-spirited crew had 
left its northern settlement, aghast at the practical diffi- 
culties of colonization, and perhaps torn by some dissension. 
With their shaky little craft, the Plough, they had drifted 
down the coast looking for more substantial settlements, 
and Winthrop's journal of July 6, 1631,^ records their 
arrival at Watertown as follows: "A small ship of 60 tons 
arrived at Natascot, Mr. Graves master. She brought ten 
passengers from London. They came with a patent for 
Sagadehock, but not liking the place they came hither. 
Their ship drew ten feet and went up to Watertown but she 
ran on ground twice by the way." The Husbandmen, with 
their vague and mysterious religious tenets, were with some 
reason looked on askance by the compact and intolerant 

1 Hosmer's Winthrop's Journal, vol. I, p 65. 



14 

colony of Endicott and Dudley. They had failed in their 
enterprise, and had come from the neighborhood of those 
fishing settlements along the north coast, whose rude and 
lawless members were in bad odor with the magistrates. 
It is doubtful, however, if they deserved^ the opprobrium 
which has clung to them because of a note added later by 
Winthrop or some other hand — " They most of them proved 
familists and vanished away." The offensive term of Fam- 
ilist, with its hint of free love tendencies, was applied to 
many of the settlers who resented and differed from the 
arbitrary standards of the Massachusetts colony. 

Thus in June, 1632, when Bachiler and Dummer arrived 
with their families and adherents, the ill-fated little venture 
was already doomed. The earnest letter which Bachiler 
brought over from the London merchants was addressed to 
a band already in disorder, and it seems probable that they 
remained near Boston only long enough to deliver their 
patent to the new comers, coupled with such gloomy reports 
of the northern coast as effectually put an end to any further 
attempt at colonization. The Company of Husbandmen 
was practically dead,^ its assets in the hands of the Massa- 
chusetts court, and its members scattered; some went back 
to England and some to Virginia. The £1400 of joint stock 
was a complete loss, and apparently the patent was seized 
on by Dummer as some security for his advances. This 
Plough Patent was for years a source of dispute,* being 
assigned some time later to one of Cromwell's commanders, 
Alexander Rigby, whose agent, George Cleeves, disputed 
the bounds of the royal province of Gorgeana which fell 
to the heirs of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The constant 
quarrels between the two factions existed until Massachu- 
setts, through its agents in England, bought up their claims 
and established Maine as a dependency of the Bay Colony. 

It seems possible that the only person who derived a profit 

1 N. E. Hist. Gen. Reg., vol. XLVI, p. 63. 
« Mass. Court Rec, pp. 92, 98, 143. 
» Me. H. & G. Rec, vol. II, p. 66 & seq. 



15 

from the defunct Plough Company was Richard Dummer,^ 
who perhaps bought out Bachiler's interest in the patent, 
and who sold it through Cleeves to Rigby. Bachiler had 
disposed of his small estate in Hampshire ^ to provide funds 
for the colony; had brought over a little company of ad- 
herents and his own children and grandchildren; and found 
himself at 71 stranded in Newtown without a settlement or 
a pastorate, and equipped with a very moderate sum of 
money, a library of fair size, and a somewhat legendary 
coat of arms,^ which the fanciful herald, Sylvanus Morgan, 
says did "appertain to Stephen Bachiler, the first pastor of 
the church of Ligonia in New England." 

Bachiler's arrival in the new colony was welcomed. 
Winthrop mentions it in his journal,* and it was undoubt- 
edly a matter of moment that the aged Oxford scholar had 
chosen to settle in the Bay, with a considerable group of 
hardy immigrants. A man of education and cultivation, as 
his letters show him to have been, was no mean addition to 
Winthrop's settlement. 

Although contrary to the direct statements of Lewis and 
Newhall, the historians of Lynn, I do not believe that 
Bachiler and his little colony immediately established a 
church at Lynn. Bachiler's own letter to Winthrop^ shows 
his first sojourn was at Newtown, now Cambridge. Here, 
too, we find the name of John Kerman,^ one of the Plough 
Company, as an early settler. My idea is that here the 
handful of colonists left of the Plough Company set up 
their first tabernacle, and listened to the prophesyings of 
Master Bachiler. The arbitrary General Court of Win- 
throp's colony promptly suppressed the influence of these 
doctrines, which were perhaps more tolerant, and thus more 

' Petition of Jeremiah Dummer to Mass. Gen. Ct. Dec, 1683; see Me. 
Hist. Coll. 

2 Feet of Fines Southants, Michaelmas Term, 6 Car. I (1630). 

3 Morgan's "Sphere of Gentry", also Heralds, Coll. "E. D. N. Alpha- 
bet of Ai-ms." 

* Hosmer's Winthrop's Journal, vol. I, p. 80-1. 

6 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4th series, vol. VH, p. 101. 

* First Records of Cambridge. 



16 

acceptable to many of the newly arriving colonists not yet 
firmly bound to the compact and narrow limits of the 
oligarchy. Bachiler and his adherents had not joined the 
church covenant by taking the "freeman's oath." The 
Court ^ on Oct. 6, 1632, ordered that "Mr. Batchel'r is 
required to forbeare exercising his gifts as a pastor or 
teacher publiquely in our pattent, unless it be to those he 
brought with him, for his contempt of authority and till 
some scandles be removed." 

Probably after this he moved from Newtown to Saugus 
(Lynn) and established his church there. Massachusetts 
was fast filling up with immigrants, and new settlements 
were being established. These plantations either kept no 
records of their first years, or, if such there were, they have 
been lost. Thus the only definite data of these early years 
are contained in the records of the General Court, and in 
the fragmentary notes of Winthrop's journal. On March 
4, 1633,2 the inhibition of the Court was removed, and 
Bachiler was free to preach at will. This I take to be the 
date of his first ministrations at Saugus. Here he continued 
some three years, preaching to his own little flock, and 
gradually attaching others to them until his church num- 
bered a score of families. This increase became less coherent 
as newcomers settled at Saugus, and on March 15, 1635, 
Winthrop records^ that "divers of the brethren of that 
church, not liking the proceedings of the pastor and withal 
making a question whether they were a church or not, did 
separate from church communion." Bachiler and his 
followers asked the advice of the other churches, who, 
wishing to hear both sides, offered to meet at Saugus about 
it. Bachiler then asked the separatists to put their griev- 
ances in writing, which they refused to do. At this Bach- 
iler 's quick temper flamed up, and he wrote to the other 
churches that he was resolved to excommunicate these 
objectors, and therefore the conference at Saugus was not 

1 Mass. Court Records, vol. I. 
" Mass. Court Records, vol. I. 
^ Hosmer's Winthrops Journal, vol. I, p. 148. 



17 

needed. This hasty proceeding (as Winthrop calls it) met 
with no approval at the lecture in Boston where Bachiler's 
letter was read, and the elders at once went to Saugus to 
pacify the contending parties. After hearing both sides it 
was agreed that, though not at first regularly constituted 
as a church, their consent and practice of a church estate 
had supplied that defect, and so, Winthrop concludes, all 
were reconciled. 

Probably these reconciling elders pointed out to Master 
Bachiler that he had not yet conformed to their custom and 
become a "freeman"; and indeed the Lynn church resem- 
bled rather the voluntary assemblings of the early Chris- 
tians than the formal and solemn installations practised in 
the Bay. At all events, on May 6, 1635,^ Bachiler yielded 
to their practice, became a freeman, and thus joined the 
compact, if inelastic, body of the Puritan colony. 

This period was one of extreme danger for the Massa- 
chusetts Puritans. The Bay was fast filhng up with English 
settlers from different counties, and each Httle band was 
headed by some disestablished or non-conforming clergy- 
man whose dislike for English intolerance was probably 
equalled by his determination to submit to no arbitrary 
church government in the new country. Thus, in America 
the leaders of the Bay Colony were confronted with the 
opposition of countless involved theological beUefs at 
variance with their own, while in England the King and 
Archbishop Laud were determined if possible to suppress 
the spread of Puritan strength by handicapping the new 
colony with a Governor-General from England, whose 
autocracy should be firmly allied with the English church 
and the Stuart dynasty. 

The colony of Winthrop and Dudley was thus attacked 
from within and from without. Small blame to them for 
determining actively to expel the contestants here, and 
passively to ignore the church-and-state rule of England. 
The banishment of Roger Williams marks the first con- 

^ Mass. Bay Colony Records, vol. I, p. 143. 



18 

certed move to stamp out theological division in their own 
body. In October of 1635 Williams was expelled from Mas- 
sachusetts, one clergyman alone dissenting. It is believed' 
that this dissenter was our Hampshire Master Bachiler. 
Indeed, the character of the two men was to some extent 
similar. Both were theorists, both intolerant of arbitrary 
rule, but history has magnified the success of one and well 
nigh obliterated the record of the other. The constructive 
talents of Roger Williams resulted in the establishment of 
a province where toleration was the rule of life, while the 
character of Bachiler, always in opposition to authority, 
made his life work nugatory. 

The same autumn which banished Williams brought 
young Sir Harry Vane to Massachusetts, and the intricacies 
of theological disputes found in him an ardent supporter. 
It is probable, too, that the Boston church, reacting from 
the stern rule of Dudley, repented their share in the banish- 
ment of Williams. At all events that church, under the 
broader and more spiritual mind of John Cotton, the 
teacher or assistant, became an active force in favor of 
toleration in the Bay. 

But the task of weeding out the Puritan garden was not 
to be stopped. The colony must be united and intrenched 
at home. Each settlement must have as its leader some 
man whose trend of thought lay with that of the governing 
oligarchy. At Salem was the arch Puritan, Hugh Peter; at 
Newtown the somber Thomas Shepherd; at Boston was 
John Wilson, whose natural benignity was overshadowed 
by his loyalty to the intolerant tenets he professed; at 
Roxbury John Eliot and Thomas Welde were in full accord 
with the narrower beliefs. Saugus, with its venerable and 
educated pastor Bachiler, was an exception, and here was 
the next stand made. In January, 1636, Winthrop records'^ 
"Mr. Batchellor of Saugus was convented before the 
magistrates. Coming out of England with a small body of 
six or seven persons and having since received in many more 

1 N. E. H. G. Reg., vol. XLVI, p. 158-9. 

* Hosmer's Winthrop's Journal, vol. I, p. 169. 



19 

at Saugus, and contention coming between him and the 
greatest part of his church, who had with the rest received 
him for their pastor, he desired dismission for himself and 
first members, which being granted upon supposition that 
he would leave the town (as he had given out), he with the 
said six or seven persons presently renewed their old cove- 
nant, intending to raise another church in Saugus; whereat 
the most and chief of the town being offended, for that it 
would cross their intention of calling Mr. Peter or some 
other minister, they complained to the magistrates, who 
seeing the distraction which was like to come by this course 
had forbidden him to proceed in any such church way until 
the cause were considered by the other ministers. But he 
refused to desist, whereupon they sent for him, and upon his 
delay day after day the marshal was sent to fetch him. 
Upon his appearance and submission and promise to remove 
out of the town within three months, he was discharged." 

Thus another opponent of the oligarchy was disposed of 
with the strong hand. The church at Saugus was put 
under the rule of an approved minister, Samuel Whiting, 
in whose honor the town name was changed to Lynn, and 
Master Bachiler, disheartened, laid down the ministry and 
retired to private life. Among his church, however, many 
besides his own family disliked the change, and sever aP 
began a new settlement on Cape Cod, among them John 
Carman, the Plough Company man. 

Bachiler himself is said to have removed^ in February, 
1636, to Ipswich, where the younger Winthrop had estab- 
lished a settlement. I find no recorded authority for this, 
and incline to think that he and his son-in-law Hussey 
followed Eichard Dummer to Newbury, where their cousin 
had taken up a farm of five hundred acres, and where 

1 Lewis's Hist, of Lynn. Freeman's Cape Cod. Mass. Bay Col. 
Rec, vol. I. 

2 Lewis's Hist, of Lynn. N. E. H. G. Reg., vol. XLVI, p. 159. But 
see first record of 1639, Ancient Records of Ipswich (ed. Schofield) evi- 
dently ref. to Henry Bachelor, from Dover, Kent County, England. 
See also Batchelder Genealogy, p. 346. 



20 

Bachiler and Hussey likewise received extensive grants of 
land.i 

The tyrannical rule of the New England Puritans met 
with little favor in Old England, where general sentiment 
favored toleration, and much disapproved arbitrary self- 
government in a colony. Mr. Stansby, a silenced Puritan 
in Norfolk, writing to John Wilson, ^ the Boston pastor, in 
1637, complains "that many of the ministers are much 
straited with you : others lay down the ministry and became 
private members, as Mr. Bachiler, Mr. Jenner and Mr. 
Nathaniel Ward. You are so strict in admission of members 
to your church that more than one-half are out of your 
church in all your congregations: this may do you much 
hurt." And now the threatened insurrection broke out into 
a flame. The Fast Day sermon of John Wheelwright 
arrayed the Massachusetts settlements in two distinct 
factions, which we may term Antinomians and Arbitrarians. 
Vane was elected Governor; Cotton as teacher ruled the 
Boston church; the brilliant, if undisciplined, Ann Hutchin- 
son lent distinction to the party of toleration. To the north 
lay the fishing settlements of Gorges and Mason, allied with 
the English church; to the south Roger Williams and his 
colony of broader views. The Massachusetts Puritans saw 
no wiser way of treating the spread of these heretical 
opinions than by suppression. By a political coup worthy 
of the twentieth century the new election was won for 
the Arbitrarians; Winthrop and Dudley went back into 
ofl&ce, and the Court of Assistants was theirs by an over- 
whelming majority. The defeated party did what they 
could by electing Antinomian deputies, but their power 
was for the moment gone. After some verbal sparring 
between Winthrop and Vane, the Massachusetts Synod, 
entirely Arbitrarian, denounced eighty erroneous doctrines, 
and at the November session of the General Court the iron 
hand was applied. The leaders of the opposition were 
banished, disfranchised, or disarmed. Massachusetts again 

'■ Coffin's Newbury; Currier's Hist, of Newbury. 
2 Mass. Hist. Soc, Coll., 4th series, VII, p. 10. 



21 

presented a stern front against toleration. Wheelwright 
and his adherents began a settlement beyond the bounds 
of Massachusetts, at Squamscott (now Exeter, N. H.). 
Richard Dummer, who was among those disarmed, had too 
much at stake to abandon his possessions at Newbury, but 
returned to England and brought back with him in 1638 a 
small band of relatives and friends who strengthened his 
hand. 

Bachiler and Hussey, living quietly at Newbury and 
having been dealt with the year before, were spared in this 
dictatorial devastation, but the inaction was not to Bach- 
iler 's liking. In the severe winter of 1637-8"^ the venerable 
Puritan walked on foot through the wilderness to Cape Cod, 
where he and his little party hoped to begin a settlement 
near that which had been estabHshed a year before by John 
Carman and the company from Saugus. The rigor of the 
season and the difficulty of the enterprise discouraged them. 
Winthrop says: "The undertaker of this (the settlement at 
Mattakees, now Yarmouth) was one Mr. Batchellor late 
pastor at Saugus, being about 76 years of age: yet he walked 
thither on foot in a very hard season. He and his company, 
being all poor men, finding the difficulty gave it over, and 
others undertook it." 

In England the growing strength of the Massachusetts 
colony had alarmed the King and Canterbury. Malcon- 
tents sent back from the New England Canaan brought to 
the kingly ear strange stories of arbitrary and independent 
acts of the trans-Atlantic Puritans. Gorges with unfailing 
persistency schemed for their overthrow. The Royal patent 
of 1629, granted or bought with anti-Scriptural bribes, 
contained privileges undreamed of when it was given. 

As early as 1635 the great Council of Plymouth sur- 
rendered its charter to the King, and the Attorney-General, 
Sir John Banks, began quo warranto proceedings to annul 
the Massachusetts patent. The whole coast line from 
Sagadahock to Narragansett was parceled out among the 
eight remaining members. To Gorges was allotted the 

1 Hoamer's Winthrop's Journal, vol. I, p. 266. 



22 

northern district, as far south as the Piscataqua. Mason's 
share adjoined this and ran south to Naumkeag, now Salem 
harbor. The coast from there to Narragansett fell to Lord 
Edward Gorges. Thus a paper division shut out Win- 
throp's colony from any Royal privileges, and the proposed 
appointment of their enemy, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, as 
Governor-General completed the pen-and-ink overthrow 
of the Bay Puritans. 

But paper was all that Charles could give; money and 
resources he had none, and he was indeed keeping his own 
coffers barely filled by illegal and unpopular "ship money" 
and other taxes. With a singular lack of perspective, after 
sweating his English subjects by these money getting 
tactics, Charles and Laud added the last straw by attempt- 
ing to force the Anglican church establishment upon Scot- 
land. The storm which this raised at home quite blotted 
out all plans for colonial government and extension. Sir 
Ferdinando was left to his own resources to fit out the ship 
which should carry the Royal Governor to his happy New 
England tenantry; and the doughty Elizabethan knight 
foundered in the attempt, just as his newly launched vessel 
broke to pieces on her way off the stocks. 

Meanwhile the narrow limits of the Massachusetts patent 
"from the Merrimack to the Charles" began to press hard 
on Winthrop's expanding colony. Each year new settlers 
flocked there from England, and new settlements were 
needed to accommodate them. In 1635 a band of Wilt- 
shire men, headed by Thomas Parker, had planted the 
Massachusetts flag on the southern bank of the Merrimack 
at Newbury, and soon the tide overflowed into Salisbury, 
Haverhill, and Rowley. 

Here began the debatable land of Mason's patent of 
1629, stretching from the Merrimack to the Piscataqua and 
joining Gorges's province of Maine. Few and scattering 
were the settlements. Depositions made by early planters 
say that in 1631 there were but three houses on all that side 
of the country adjoining the Piscataqua. Captain Neale 
was sent out by Mason and Gorges in the same month as 



23 

Winthrop's fleet, and on June 1, 1630, settled in the stone 
house built by Thomson, the Scotch trader, in 1623 at 
Little Harbor. These absentee landlords had large plans, 
and built a manor house or two, set up sawmills and fishing 
stages, but their colonies lacked the effective personal 
element which the Bay Colony possessed, and they came to 
little. 

By the close of 1637 Mason was dead. Gorges was busy 
in the King's cause, and the vast regions along the Pis- 
cataqua contained but a few dismembered plantations. 
The Antinomian heretics were banished from Massachusetts 
or disarmed; ship-loads of immigrants friendly to the Bay 
Colony were arriving, and they must be provided with 
suitable plantations. The "Lords Brethren" of the Bay 
scanned their patent and saw that its northern line was the 
Merrimack. Now that river reaches the sea at Newbury, 
but its head waters lie far to the North. "The wish was 
father to the thought." Winthrop and his oligarchy looked 
the ground over and decided that the King's intention was 
that their patent should include all the country south of the 
headwaters. As early as 1636^ the General Court passed 
an order that a plantation should be begun at Winnicunnet, 
some fifteen miles north of Newbury, and that Richard 
Dummer and John Spencer should press men to build a 
house there. The exact location of this house, intended to 
mark possession, but afterwards called the "Bound House," 
cannot now be definitely determined. It was, says Wheel- 
wright in 1665, " three large miles North of the Merrimack," 
apparently within the limits of the present town of Sea- 
brook. Just where it was, by whom it was occupied and 
how long, it is impossible to say. The settlement planned 
was not completed, and in 1637 the inhabitants of Newbury 
were by court order allowed to settle there. Except for 
Nicholas Easton and a Mr. Geoffrey the Newbury settlers 
did not take up the new grant, and the two mentioned were 
unwelcome to the Massachusetts authorities, Easton (after- 

1 Dow's Hist, of Hampton, N. H., vol. I, pp. 6, 7. 



24 

wards Governor of Rhode Island) having been disarmed as 
an Antinomian. 

The salt marshes and pleasant meadows were well known 
to Newbury men, and our old friend Bachiler soon descried 
in them a fit place to establish his little colony, now living 
with him at Newbury. In the autumn of 1638 the Massa- 
chusetts General Court^ granted the petition of Bachiler 
and his company to settle at Winnicunnet. The company 
included the adherents of Bachiler, his son-in-law and his 
four grandchildren, and with them were also one or two 
Norfolk men who had settled first in Watertown and then 
in Newbury. The Court ruled also (perhaps remembering 
past difficulties with Bachiler) that John Winthrop, Jr., 
and Mr. Bradstreet should go with the little band of set- 
tlers, and no decisive act should be done without the affir- 
mation of these two Massachusetts officials. 

A letter from Bachiler to the younger Winthrop^ dated 
Oct. 9, 1638, still extant, shows that the actual date of 
the trip from Newbury, which was made in a shallop, was 
October 14th. On this pleasant fall day then, the settle- 
ment was made, and our ancient friend probably felt that 
in this new plantation his remaining days would be spent in 
peace. The future looked serene. His adherents were 
united to him, a pleasant and fertile spot had been chosen, 
and one at the farthest northern end of the Massachusetts 
patent, if not indeed really outside of its limits. To the 
west lay Wheelwright and his little colony, farther up 
the coast were the independent settlements of Strawberry 
Bank and Cocheco. It looked as though liberty indeed lay 
before him. 

But the true colonizing spirit of the Bay did not end with 
the beginning of a settlement; the authorities provided 
the settlers also, and saw to it as best they could that the 
Bay influence should predominate. With the next spring 
came a band of Norfolk and Suffolk men to Hampton, and 

1 Mass. Bay Col. Rec, vol. I, p. 236. 

2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. 4th series, vol. VII, p. 98. 



25 

with them came Timothy Dalton, a relative of Winthrop, 
and a man loyal to the Massachusetts doctrines. 

Dalton^ was a Cambridge graduate, ejected from his 
Suffolk rectory of Woolverstone for non-conformity, who 
had come to New England in 1635, settling in the Puritan 
colony at Dedham. The pastor and teacher, nominally 
head of the church and assistant, were as far apart as the 
poles. Bachiler was old, educated, controversial, versed 
in polemical discussion, and wedded to his own ideas. 
Dalton was younger, less cultivated, equally obstinate, and 
determined to uphold the tenets of his cousin and neighbor, 
Winthrop. Probably dissension began at once; it grew and 
spread like wildfire. Time has obliterated nearly all traces 
of the quarrel. The town records contain no reference to 
it. The church records have disappeared. 

An occasional gleam flashed out until in 1641 the dissen- 
sions at Hampton culminated in the sorry incident related in 
Winthrop's journal under date of Nov. 12, 1641.2 No per- 
sonal criticism of Stephen Bachiler has up to this date been 
discovered, no breath of scandal has touched his character. 
That he was opposed to the arbitrary rule of the Bay oli- 
garchy is unquestioned, but it was left to the "reverend, 
grave and gracious Mr. Dalton" to defame his character 
and blacken his memory by the story which Winthrop 
recites with that gusto with which similar incidents, real or 
falsified, were treated by early Puritan historians. Win- 
throp says: 

"Mr. Stephen Batchellor, the pastor of the church at 
Hampton, who had suffered much at the hands of the 
Bishops and having a lusty comely woman to his wife, did 
solicit the chastity of his neighbor's wife, who acquainted 
her husband therewith; whereupon he was dealt with, but 
denied it, as he had told the woman he would do, and com- 
plained to the magistrates against the woman and her 
husband for slandering him. The church likewise dealing 
with him, he stiffly denied it, but soon after when the Lord's 

1 Blake's "English Home of Timothy Dalton" 1899 
* Hosmer's Winthrop's Journal, vol. II, pp. 45-6. 



26 

Supper was to be administered he did voluntarily confess 
the attempt, and that he did intend to defile her if she had 
consented. The church being moved by his full confession 
and tears silently forgave him, and communicated with 
him; but after finding how scandalous it was they took 
advice of other elders, and after long debate and much 
pleading and standing upon the church's forgiving and 
being reconciled to him in communicating with him after 
he had confessed it, they proceeded to cast him out. After 
this he went on again in a variable course, sometimes 
seeming very penitent, soon after again excusing himself 
and casting blame upon others, especially his fellow elder 
Mr. Dalton (who indeed had not carried himself in this 
cause so well as became him, and was brought to see his 
faihng and acknowledged it to the elders of the other 
churches who had taken much pains about this matter). 
So he behaved himself to the elders when they dealt with 
him. He was off and on for a long time, and when he had 
seemed most penitent so as the church were ready to have 
received him in again, he would fall back again and as it 
were repent of his repentance. In this time his house and 
near all his substance was consumed by fire. When he had 
continued excommunicated for near two years, and much 
agitation had been about the matter, and the church being 
divided so as he could not be received in, at length the matter 
was referred to some magistrates and elders, and by their 
mediation he was released of his excommunication but not 
received to his pastor's office. Upon occasion of this media- 
tion Mr. Wilson, pastor of Boston, wrote this letter to him." 
It is to be regretted that the letter is not extant. 

Here, then, is the story as told by Winthrop with some 
detail, which has for nearly three centuries blackened the 
memory of our Hampshire Puritan. It were bold to dis- 
credit Winthrop, and yet the tale is stamped throughout 
with improbability. This account is all that remains; the 
court records, district or general, contain no trace of it, 
no letters mention the case. A careful search discloses 
nothing among the Massachusetts archives; church records, 



27 

9 

local and synodical, are blank concerning it. No published 
or manuscript record except Winthrop's gives us any facts. 
Bachiler's age, eighty years, discredits the story. His life 
up to this time was public, honored and respected. The 
story apparently comes from his enemy Dalton, whose 
literary relics afford us nothing, unless we may consider a 
large bequest to Bachiler's grandson Nathaniel as a tardy 
attempt at reparation. 

It is curious to note that on the shoulders of Dalton^ and 
Hugh Peter rests also that slanderous account of Knollys's 
and Larkham's offenses against decency, perpetuated in 
Winthrop, but now generally disbelieved. It is almost 
inconceivable that the ardent and spiritual Knollys, the 
founder of the Baptist church, could have sullied with 
that filthy and indelible stain a life otherwise pure. Thomas 
Larkham's life in England is blameless. The fact is that 
the settlements north of the Merrimack were looked on by 
the Bay Puritans as reeking with impurity, and any garbled 
accounts of misconduct there were of a pleasant savour to 
the nostrils of Massachusetts. 

But let us see what Bachiler and his friends and neighbors 
have to say. Himself, writing to Winthrop^ in 1643, says: 
"I see not how I can depart hence" (that is from Hampton, 
to accept one of two calls he had received, to Casco and to 
Exeter), "till I have, or God for me, cleared and vindicated 
the cause and wrongs I have suffered of the church I yet 
live in; that is, from the Teacher, who hath done all and 
been the cause of all the dishonor that hath accrued to 
God, shame to myself, and grief to all God's people, by his 
irregular proceedings and abuse of the power of the church 
in his hands, — by the major part cleaving to him, being 
his countrymen and acquaintance in old England. Whiles 
my cause, though looked slightly into by diverse Elders 
and brethren, could never come to a judicial searching 
forth of things, and an impartial trial of his allegations and 
my defence; which, if yet they might, I am confident in God, 

1 Hosmer's Winthrop's Journal, vol. II, pp. 28, 89. 

2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4th series, vol. VII, p. 102. 



28 

upon certain knowledge and due proof before yourselves, 
the Teacher's act of his excommunicating me (such as I am, 
to say no more of myself), would prove the foulest matter, 
— both for the cause alleged of that excommunication, and 
the impulsive cause, — even wroth and revenge. Also the 
manner of all his proceeding throughout to the very end, 
and lastly his keeping me still under bonds, — and much 
worse than here I may mention for divers causes, — which, 
to bear on my shoulder in going hence, is so uncomfortable 
that, tho' I can refer it to God's revenging hand and wait 
on him, yet then I am taught again that such sins endanger 
the very state of church and commonwealth, for neglecting 
of the complaints of the afflicted in such a state, wherein 
Magistrates, Elders, and brethren all are in the sincerest 
manner set to find out sin, and search into the complaints 
of the poor, — not knowing father nor mother, church nor 
Elder. In such a State, I say, — in such a wine-cellar to find 
such a cockatrice, and not to kill him, — to have such mon- 
strous proceedings passed over, without due justice, — this 
again stirs up my spirit to seek for a writ ad melius inquiren- 
dum. Towards which the enclosed letter tendeth, as you 
may perceive. Yet if your wisdoms shall judge it more 
safe and reasonable to refer all my wrongs (conceived) to 
God's own judgment, I bless the Lord for his grace, if I 
know mine own heart herein, I can submit myself to be 
overruled by you. To conclude, — if the Apostle's words be 
objected, that this is thanksworthy, that a man for con- 
science's sake shall endure grief, suffering wrongfully, — 
and therefore I ought in this aforesaid cause of mine to 
endure the grief thereof in whatsoever I suffer wrongfully, 
without seeking redress or justice against the offender, — I 
profess it was more absolutely necessary so to suffer, when 
the Church had no civil power to seek unto, than in such a 
land of righteousness as our New England is." 

So far as we know, Bachiler's son-in-law Hussey and his 
grandchildren, who were by this time prominent among the 
younger Hampton settlers, stood by the slandered patriarch. 
While the turmoil was at its height Bachiler was chosen as 



29 



arbitrator ^ in the important land suit of Cleeve v. Winter 
His award was adverse to Winter, but the Rev Robert 
Jordan, writing to his father-in-law Winter ^^ July, 1642, 
says- "Mr. Stephen Bachiler, the pastor of a church in the 
Massachusetts Bay, was, I must say, a grave, reverend, and 
a good man; but whether more incUned to justice or mercy 
or whether carried aside by secret insinuations, I must 
refer to your own judgment. Sure I am that Cleeve is well 
nigh able to disable the wisest brain." 

When the five years' struggle at Hampton was over and 
the Bachiler party defeated, the ancient Puritan minister 
decided to leave Hampton, and cast about in his mind 
where to settle. By this time Massachusetts had strength- 
ened its Unes, and had reached out to the Piscataqua settle- 
ments to take them into its fold. One by one Strawberry 
Bank, Dover, and Exeter joined the Bay Colony. Wheel- 
wright, the punished heretic, had withdrawn into Maine, 
and Eieter was without a pastor. The Maine settlements 
were free from the rule of the Bay, since Alexander Rigby 
one of Cromwell's commanders, had bought the Plough 
patent from Bachiler's Company of Husbandmen, was 
actively at war with the Gorges heirs over his title and yet 
was opposed to the arbitrary encroachments of Winthrop s 

'"^BoTh Exeter and Rigby's settlement sought^ to secure 
Bachiler for their pastor. Both were nfgf«"^^ planta- 
tions to Hampton, and must have heard of the Hampton 
slander. Apparently they disbeUeved it and certain W 
invited him to settle with them. In February, 1644, Bach- 
iler laid the matter before the church at Boston, and the 
elders apparently advised him merely to remove from 
Hampton, leaving him to decide between the two calls 
In May he decided to accept the call to Exeter, and wrote 
to Winthrop as an old friend to acquaint him with the 
decision, asking him to urge '' his brother Wilson" to attend 
the ordination at Exeter, and ''make it a pro^esse of 

1 Me. Hist. Soc. Coll., Trelawny Papers. 

8 Mass. Hist. Sqc. Coll., 4tli series, vol. VII, pp. 100-1U». 



30 

recreation to see his ould friend and thus to do me this laste 
service save to my buriall." 

But the Boston elders, having apparently advised some- 
what against his removing to Casco, now looked with dis- 
may at his gathering a church at Exeter, which the Bay 
authorities now claimed lay within their patent. The 
General Court held at Boston^ May 29, 1644, passed this 
order : 

"Whereas it appears to this Court that some of the 
inhabitants of Exeter do intend shortly to gather a church 
and call Mr. Bachiler to be their minister: and forasmuch 
as the divisions there are judged by this Court to be such 
as for the present they cannot comfortably proceed in such 
weighty and sacred affairs, it is therefore ordered that 
direction shall be sent to defer the gathering of a church or 
any such proceeding until this court or the Court at Ips- 
wich, upon further satisfaction of their reconciliation and 
fitness, shall give allowance thereunto." 

Winthrop's journal, mentioning this order ,^ adds, — "And 
besides Mr. Batchellor had been in three places before, and 
through his means, as was supposed, the churches fell to 
such divisions as no peace could be till he was removed." 

The call to Casco declined, and the gathering of a church 
at Exeter being forbidden, our stout old Master Bachiler 
was now quite adrift. In 1644 he was forced to sell his 
great farm^ at Hampton, and moved soon after to Straw- 
berry Bank, where he lived for some years, preaching to 
the godless fishermen of that seaside parish. With him 
went his godchild and grandson, Stephen Samborne,^ and 
they settled on the Kittery side of the Piscataqua. At this 
time, Richard Gibson's Anglican church establishment 
having been disrupted, and James Parker, that "Godly 
man and scholar" having gone to the Barbadoes, the 
missionary at Strawberry Bank had also the cure of souls 

' Mass. Bay Colony Rec. 

^ Hosmer's Winthrop's Journal, vol. II, p. 179. 

3 N. E. H. G. Reg., vol. XLVI, p. 251. 

* York Deeds, vol. I, p. II. 



31 

in the hamlet of Kittery and the fishing settlements of the 
Isles of Shoals. Here dwelt a type of men different from 
the devout colony of Hampton and of Exeter, a rude, 
lawless race of deep sea fishermen, often also deep drinkers 
and roisterers. Jenness, in his "Isles of Shoals," gives us 
graphic pictures of their lives, as for instance the court 
record in the case of John Andrews, husband of a local 
termagant, who sought consolation in the wine cup and 
was convented therefor, he "swearing by the blood of Christ 
that he was above ye heavens and ye stars, at which time 
(the record ingenuously comments) ye said Andrews did 
seem to have drunk too much, and did at that time call the 
witnesses Doggs, toads, and foule birds." 

In April, 1647, Bachiler gave to the four grandchildren^ 
he had brought to New England what remained of his 
Hampton property. He petitioned the General Court in 
1645^ for some allowance for his six years' pastorate at 
Hampton, but was referred to the district court. While 
his case was pending he wrote^ from Strawberry Bank to 
Winthrop in May, 1647: 

"I can shew a letter of your Worship's occasioned by 
some letters of mine, craving some help from you in some 
cases of oppression under which I lay, — and still do, — 
wherein also you were pleased to take notice of those oppres- 
sions and wrongs; that in case the Lord should give, or open 
a door of opportunity, you would be ready to do me all 
the lawful right and Christian service that any cause of 
mine might require. Which time being, in my conceit, 
near at hand, all that I would humbly crave is this, — to 
read this inclosed letter to my two beloved and reverend 
brothers, your Elders (Cotton and Wilson), and in them to 
the whole Synod. Wherein you shall fully know my dis- 
tressed case and condition; and so, as you shall see cause, 
to join with them in counsel, what best to do for my relief. 

"It is no news to certify you that God hath taken from 

1 N. H. Prob. Rec, Miss., vol. XIII, p. 221. 

2 Mass. Bay Col. Rec, III. 

3 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4th series, vol. VII, pp. 108-109. 



32 

me my dear helper and yokefellow. And whereas, by appro- 
bation of the whole plantation of Strawberry Bank, they 
have assigned an honest neighbor, (a widow) to have some 
eye and care towards my family, for washing, baking, and 
other such common services,- — it is a world of woes to think 
what rumors detracting spirits raise up, that I am married 
to her, or certainly shall be; and cast on her such aspersions 
without ground or proof, that I see not how possibly I shall 
subsist in the place, to do them that service from which 
otherwise they cannot endure to hear I shall depart. The 
Lord direct and guide us jointly and singularly in all things, 
to his glory and our rejoicing in the day and at the appearing 
of our Lord Jesus Christ! And so, with my humble service 
to your worship, your blessed and beloved yokefellow, 
(mine ancient true friend) with blessing on you both, yours 
and all the people of God with you, I end and rest your 
Worship's in the Lord to commend." 

But "whether at Naushapur or Babylon," whether at 
Saugus, Hampton, or Strawberry Bank, peace in New 
England was not to be found by Master Bachiler. 

His third venture in the matrimonial lottery was this 
honest neighbor "Mary surnamed Magdalene," the widow 
of an obscure seaman named Beetle, whose adultery with 
a local rascal, George Rogers, was soon detected.^ Rogers 
was a renegade seaman or servant of Trelawny, who had 
settled at Kittery, across the river from Strawberry Bank. 
This ignominious Lotharian adventure with Mary Bachiler 
was punished in March, 1651,^ by the Court at York, which 
sentenced Rogers to be flogged, and the erring wife, after 
her approaching delivery, to be whipped and branded with 
the letter "A," the "Scarlet Letter" of Hawthorne's 
romance. 

But before the York court had passed its sentence 
Bachiler had doubtless discovered the true nature of this 
obscure Thais, and probably left her and returned to Hamp- 

' York Co. Rec, Court at Gorgeana, Oct. 15, 1650. 
''York Co. Rec, Court at Gorgeana, March 11, 1651. 



33 

ton, applying for a divorce. The district court at Salisbury^ 
on April 9, 1650, gave him a judgment against the town of 
Hampton for £40, "wages detained," and at the same session 
fined him £10 for not publishing his marriage according to 
law. It then entered the following atrocious order: 

"That Mr. Batchelor and his wife shall live together as 
man and wife, as in this court they have publicly professed 
to do; and if either desert one another, then hereby the 
court doth order that the marshall shall apprehend both 
the said Mr. Batchelor and Mary, his wife, and bring them 
forthwith to Boston, there to be kept till the next Quarter 
Court of Assistants, that farther consideration thereof may 
be had, both of them moving for a divorce: Provided, not- 
withstanding, that if they put in 50 pounds each of them, 
for their appearance, that then they shall be under their 
bail to appear at the next court; and in case Mary Batchel- 
lor shall live out of the jurisdiction, without mutual consent 
for a time, then the clerk shall give notice to the magistrate 
at Boston of her absence, that further order may be taken 
therein." 

By October, 1650, (the next term of court) when the Maine 
court presented Rogers and Mary Batchellor for adultery, 
the local justices had probably learned the actual offence 
and remitted half the fine imposed in April. ^ Perhaps they 
ignored the incomprehensible order referred to, for we hear 
no more of it; but life in New England had become impossi- 
ble for the venerable Puritan. Old England seemed a sure 
haven. There Cromwell and the Parliament had over- 
thrown his ancient foes, the bishops, and there he had 
grandchildren living in comfort. Sometime in 1654, accom- 
panied by one grandson and his family, he sailed from New 
England, the Arcadia of his hopes, to England, the land of 
his earliest struggles. His last act on leaving America was 
to turn over what remained of his property to Christopher 

1 Old Norfolk County Court Records (MS.) 2nd mo., 9th day, 1650, 
Court at Salisbuiy. 

2 Old Norfolk County Records (MS) 8th month, lst-3rd days, 1651. 
Court at Hampton. 



34 

Hussey and his wife "in consideration that the said Hussey 
had Httle or nothing from him with his daughter as also 
that the said son Hussey and his wife had been helpful unto 
him both formerly and in fitting him for his voyage." 
This kindly act is the last that we have of authentic record 
concerning Bachiler, who it may be hoped returned to 
prosperous and friendly kindred in old England to linger 
out his last years. 

The graceless Mary Bachiler was sentenced by the Maine 
courts^ for sexual irregularities in 1651, 1652, and 1654, and 
lived to cast one more slander at her aged and deceived 
victim. She petitioned the Massachusetts General Court in 
1656,2 stating: 

"Whereas, your petitioner having formerly lived with 
Mr. Stephen Bachiler in this Colony as his lawful wife (and 
not unknown to divers of you, as I conceive), and the said 
Mr. Bachiler, upon some pretended ends of his own, has 
transported himself into old England, for many years since, 
and betaken himself to another wife, as your petitioner hath 
often been credibly informed, and there continues; whereby 
your petitioner is left destitute not only of a guide to herself 
and her children, but also made incapable of disposing her- 
self in the way of marriage to any other without a lawful 
permission. . . . And were she free of her engagement 
to Mr. Bachiler, might probably so dispose of herself as 
that she might obtain a meet helper to assist her to procure 
such means for her livelihood, and the recovery of her 
children's health, as might keep them from perishing, — 
which your petitioner, to her great grief, is much afraid of, 
if not timely prevented." 

This allegation rests on her unsupported and discredited 
statement, and may be taken as an utter falsehood. A 
Dover court record^ of March 26, 1673, seems to indicate 
that the daughter of Mary Bachiler (born in coverture and 

1 York Co. Records (MS), Courts of Dec. 5, 1651, Oct. 12, 1652, June 
9, 1654. 

2 Lewis's Hist, of Lynn, pp. 161-2. 

3 N. H. Deeds, vol. 2, p. 194. 



35 

therefore legally the daughter of our Hampshire parson, 
though undoubtedly disowned by him) attempted to secure 
some part of Bachiler's estate. Her husband, Wilham 
Richards, was given power of administration to the estate 
of "Mr. Steven Batchelor dec'd," being also prudently 
enjoined to bring in an inventory thereof to the next court, 
and to put up "sufficient security to respond ye estate any 
yt may make better claim unto it." As no further record 
exists of this matter, we may conclude this "fishing expedi- 
tion" resulted in nothing. Tradition states^ that the 
ancient Hampshire parson died in England in 1660, having 
rounded out a century, and that the last six years of his 
life were spent in tranquility with prosperous descendants 
in England. The statement that he died in Hackney, near 
London, rests, I think, on a letter to Increase Mather from 
William Hooke, who speaks of the death there of a Mr. 
Bachiler, a preacher, but I think refers to John Bachiler, 
the hcenser of publications mentioned in Edward's "Gan- 
graena." 

' Whether or not the facts as to Bachiler's life in Old and 
New England will ever be exactly known, it is difficult to 
state. New manuscripts are constantly coming to light 
both in England and America, and it would be a welcome 
task to clear away authoritatively the opprobrium which 
has long rested on his memory. 

The statements of Winthrop's journal are so diametrically 
opposed to what we know elsewhere of Bachiler's life, his 
spirit and his character that, judged by the laws of evidence, 
his memory may be said to have been cleared. Bachiler's 
mind, as shown by the scanty Hght of other contemporary 
records, shows cultivation in excess of many of his contem- 
poraries, and his few remaining letters evince a gentleness 
and a courtesy quite at variance with the account given by 
Winthrop. 

Two portraits are offered of him. In one, you may see 
an erring and disgraced old man, hunted from place to 
place by his own mistakes, fleeing from England to America, 

1 N. E. H. G. Reg., vol. XII, p. 272. 



36 

and finally hiding in England from the result of his senile 
misconduct. I prefer to see in the other a high-minded but 
unsuccessful patriarch, with the defects of his qualities, at 
variance with the narrow and doomed intent of the Bay 
oligarchs, spending his life in the vain search for religious 
freedom, and rebelling at the limitations and prescriptions 
which time was to show were impossible in a free and grad- 
ually enlightened democracy. Driven from place to place 
by the autocracy first of the English church and then of 
the Winthrop colony, at last he saw triumphant the prin- 
ciples of social and reUgious enfranchisement, for which he 
spent his life, his means, and his best ambitions. 




LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



014 069 352 2 



